This is odd behavior for a lifelong Yankees fan. But I have my reasons.

Every baseball fan in this region knows there is a nasty financial dispute going on between the YES network and Comcast, which this season has dropped its Yankee games. We who still subscribe to Comcast, at every-increasing charges, are the victims.

I resolved to listen to the games on the radio, the way I sometimes did even when I could watch them on TV. But after a couple of weeks, I lost interest. For one thing, I’m mad at the Yankees’ role in the cable dispute, as they own 20 percent of YES.

For another thing, the Yankees kind of stink. They’ve been struggling to get to a winning percentage of .500. The great A-Rod is hitting .219.

Meanwhile, the Copa America and European Championship soccer tournaments have been happening and the games often are gripping. Yes, it helps that I watched my two daughters play soccer for about 20 years, so I have a “leg up” on most Americans when it comes to understanding the game.

But the match-ups often are striking, the stakes are high. On Monday afternoon of this week, I stopped at the Hamden Town House for a late lunch and noticed the TV above the counter was showing the game between England and Iceland. Nobody else in the place was paying any attention to it but I saw a major, historic upset was unfolding: mighty England was losing to little ol’ Iceland.

Iceland did prevail, 2-1, an international stunner. I extended my lunch break to watch the dramatic ending.

But here’s some irony: in this year when I am watching so little baseball, I did take in an entire Yankees game. Why? A benefactor, a philanthropist who had read of my disappointment over not being able to watch the Yanks gave me four tickets in the “Legends Suite” at Yankee Stadium.

When I looked at those tickets, I was shocked: $190 each!

I rounded up my elder daughter (the younger was, to her sorrow, unavailable) and my elder brought in two of her buds for that Saturday afternoon game in mid-May.

The Yanks were hosting the Chicago White Sox, who were playing much better than the “Bronx Bombers.” Most teams are.

When I presented my four tickets to the usher, he just kept walking; closer, closer, closer to the field. And, with our eyes bugging out and our jaws dropping, he pointed to the second row, about 20 feet behind first baseman Mark Teixeira.

Never had I had such a seat at a baseball game. And get this: our seats entitled us to free food! Ordered from our seats and delivered to our seats! (We did have to buy our own beer, but am I complaining?)

And get this: the Yankees won! They managed to cobble together two runs and their starting and relief pitchers held down the Sox.

Will I go back to the Stadium this year? I doubt it.

Maybe I’ll get that old feeling back as the season progresses into August and September. Maybe I’ll turn the radio on again or watch those few games that Comcast picks up via NESN, WPIX and ESPN. But the greedy Yankee owners should be worried that they’re driving their long-loyal fans away.

***

I received an interesting email from Ed Fitzgerald, who has a historic item to offer to the proper person. “I was wondering if you could help me reunite an old sign I found with its rightful owner,” he wrote. “My dad recently passed away and while cleaning the attic, I found this sign.”

Fitzgerald attached a photo of the sign from Malone’s 3 Stein Restaurant, a beloved fixture in New Haven until its closing circa the late ’70s. New Haven Register reporters and editors spent many joyful hours there and I wrote about its final night.

Fitzgerald told me, “I asked my sibs and discovered my younger sister, Lisa, and her St. Mary High School classmates ‘borrowed’ the sign after a night of screwdrivers 40 years ago. We laughed about the old days and she agreed the time has come for the sign to be returned. I was hoping you could arrange it.”

I told him I would spread the word. Who out there wants to make a rightful and just claim?

***

As we head into the July 4 weekend, it’s time to relay highlights of an email from Frank Quadrino, retired dispatch supervisor for the New Haven Police Department, concerning the way many New Haveners used to celebrate this holiday.

“Every July 3 to 5, numerous bonfires would keep us and the Fire Department very busy at the intersection of Canner and Orange streets,” he wrote. “There would be hundreds of people mingling within the environs and come nightfall, the action would begin.”

Quadrino said many officers were assigned to that intersection and they were told to keep the “3rd paddy wagon” ready near Wilbur Cross High School.

“In 1977 someone threw an improvised 36-inch tube filled with gunpowder that caused several injuries as well as property damage to all the houses on the corner,” he recalled.

“Every plainclothes officer and motorcycle officer would jump from Canner and Orange to Clark and Pleasant, to Orange and Pearl, to Fillmore and Pine, to Fort Hale Park and repeat the cycle to hundreds of hot spots,” Quadrino said.

He also recalled bonfires at “Foster and Cottage, Nicoll and Eagle, Rice Field and State and Mill River Streets. In Fair Haven, virtually every corner had activity, as well as Fair Haven Heights, the Annex and throughout Morris Cove.”

Alluding to two veteran New Haven Register staffers, now deceased, Quadrino wrote: “Those were the days when Kirby Kennedy and John Mongillo Jr. would have multiple (police) scanners running simultaneously, taking hundreds of pictures.”

In terms of all that crazy firepower, it’s a good thing that, as Quadrino put it, “those days are long gone.” But it sounds like a hoot.